1963 British comedy film by Henry Levin
Come Fly with Me is a 1963 British comedy film about three beautiful international air hostesses looking for romance and excitement. The film has dramatic or soap opera elements to it, and was a vehicle for glamorizing the Jet Age and the prestige, adventure and romance that came with being an air hostess. It is based on Bernard Glemser's 1960 chick-lit novel Girl on a Wing,[1] which was published again in 1969 under the title The Fly Girls.
Directed by Henry Levin, the film stars Dolores Hart, Hugh O'Brian, Karlheinz Böhm, Pamela Tiffin, Karl Malden, and Lois Nettleton.
Plot
Three air hostesses, based in New York City, are working for the fictional airline Polar Atlantic Airways. The three make regular flights from New York City to Paris and Vienna. Along the way, air hostess Donna Stuart (Dolores Hart), meets Baron Franz Von Elzingen (Karlheinz Böhm), an impoverished Austrian baron who turns out to be a diamond smuggler. "Southern belle" Carol Brewster (Pamela Tiffin) develops a crush on the plane's First Officer Ray Winsley (Hugh O'Brian), who is having an affair with a married woman (Dawn Addams). The third air hostess, Hilda "Bergie" Bergstrom (Lois Nettleton), gets noticed by a multi-millionaire widower from Texas named Walter Lucas (Karl Malden).
Production notes
Henry Levin was signed to direct in April 1962.[2]
The film was known in production as Champagne Flight,[3] The Friendliest Girls in the World[4] and Girl on a Wing.[5]
The film was shot in Panavision and Metrocolor during 1962 in New York City, Paris, Versailles, Vienna, and the Woerther See with studio interiors shot at MGM British Studios in Borehamwood, England. The shoot took 12 weeks.[6]
It filmed at the same time as Follow the Boys.[4]
It premiered in the United States on 27 March 1963.
Glemsser wrote a follow-up novel in 1972, titled The Super-Jet Girls. It was not made into a film however.
Critical reception
Variety wrote upon the film's release, "Sometimes one performance can save a picture and in Come Fly with Me it's an engaging and infectious one by Pamela Tiffin. The production has other things going for it like an attractive cast, slick pictorial values and smart, stylish direction by Henry Levin, but at the base of all this sheer sheen lies a frail, frivolous and featherweight storyline that, in trying to take itself too seriously, flies into dramatic air pockets and crosscurrents that threaten to send the entire aircraft into a tailspin."[1]
